At dinner last night we were talking about Disneyworld. When I
think of Disney I think of little wooden figures singing how it is
a small world and we are all pretty much alike. Evelyn and I have
been all over the world and we can attest that people really are
alike all over. Everywhere we go everyone we meet is an oxygen-
breather and every one has a head. And don't expect the
similarities to go much beyond that. Because people are alike,
but people are also more different than you can imagine. Cultures
can be more different than you can imagine. People are more
different than the aliens in the novels we read. That is the
reason we travel. You want to get a feel for the terrible and
wonderful degree of variation that can occur in a species like
ours. And you cannot read about the differences to appreciate
them. You have to be there. I tell Evelyn that any place you
have not seen by the time you die, you will never get another
chance.

And as a science fiction fan the alienness of other cultures makes
many of my most vivid memories. I don't think since I wrote my
log of the trip I have repeated the story of our visit to
Varanasi, India. You may know it as Benares. It has a texture
that you could not confuse with anything Disney.

On the way into Varanasi we met another couple who were also
visiting on their own and we suggested the four of us get a local
guide and a driver and go to visit the ghats on the Ganges. We
warned them that we had Luck of Leeper. We usually have unusually
bad luck on trips.

The culture of Varanasi revolves around the ghats. Also, it was
hot and it would be cooler by the river so we would kill two birds
with one stone. So the four of us rented a car and driver for a
day.

The Ganges is the Sacred River of India. It flows right through
the heart of Varanasi. The river is used for everything you can
think water might be used for, including some things that should
not be done in the same water. But these things are done and
apparently it flows fast enough that they do not have serious
problems. And lining the side of the Ganges are the ghats. Ghats
are stone steps going down into the river. I think we should call
them terraces. But they are made of stone. And most of Indian
culture takes place in the streets or on the ghats. Holy men
climb down them to bathe in the river. Merchants ply their wares.
I think there is even fishing, though what fish survive in this
water I have no idea. Cows roam the streets freely and do what
cows do. The air has the smell of the cows and of spices.

As foreigners it is hard to walk through the street without being
stopped by merchants wanting to sell to us. But we knew we wanted
and what we wanted was a boat ride on the Sacred Ganges. We
haggled for a boatman to row us. We would go up the river, to the
right, for a way. Then we would return down river to be dropped
off at the Burning Ghat.

What is the Burning Ghat? It is a sacred thing to have one's
remains burned on a pyre and one's ashes spread on the Sacred
Ganges. More people want this end than the pyres can accommodate.
Three pyres burn all day long, all night long, burning all the
dead who died wanting their ashes spread. When one pyre is burned
down a new one is built and another body is put on top and burned.
7 by 24 by 3. I assume you get an appointment to have your loved
one's body burnt and they can schedule it a week from today at
2:30 AM. The local forests have mostly been cut down to make wood
for pyres. This ghat was where we were to visit after the boat.

We gingerly entered the boat and the boatman rowed. The boat was
probably already a little overloaded. The boatman rowed us up the
river. We looked at the locals and they looked at us. The houses
that face the river have free entertainment, even if it is low-key
entertainment. They looked at us from the ghat and from sitting
in the windows of buildings. The big diversion was watching river
traffic. Apparently to many Indians all foreigners look like just
foreigners. (In the Agra airport later that trip an Indian would
stop me and ask if I was Mr. Sakajima. To an Indian I look like I
could be a Mr. Sakajima.)

It had been hot and dry. As it turned out there had not been a
monsoon this year. This was soon to be fixed even though October
was supposed to be dry. Quite suddenly there were gray and then
black clouds over us, moving in fast. It started to rain just a
bit. If it really rained the little boat would be swamped. The
boat had been softly rocking, now it rocked more in jolts as a
breeze picked up.

The boatman looked at the black sky and quickly decided that he
had gone far enough up-river. He turned the boat around and
headed for the Burning Ghat. It did not really rain yet but just
as we got out the wind picked up. With the spray from the river
it could as well have been raining. The boatman docked at the
ghat and we quickly climbed to the stone steps. As we did we were
engulfed in the smoke of burning wood and the burning dead. Above
dark clouds rushed to fill the empty sky. My photo-vest had a
hood, but it would not stand up to the kind of rain we would soon
be getting.

Then the rain started in volumes you rarely see even in a Miami
storm. With the smell of ash still in our nostrils we took refuge
at a shrine to Shiva where we could get out of the rain. It was
one of the few doors that were not locked. None of us worshipped
Shiva, but he could do this good turn for us. Evelyn asked a
local guide how long does it generally rains. "Lady, I am not
God."

Maybe an hour later the rain stopped enough for us to try to get
back to our hired car. It was on the far side of the street. And
the driver was faced away from us. We called to him and he kept
reading his newspaper. We yelled but could not get his attention.
And the water in the street was literally two feet deep. The town
had filled with rain almost like a tub. And one does not lightly
step into water in the street. Did I say that the cows who
wandered the street did what cows do?

Evelyn spied a path to the car that looked only about six inches
deep in the uneven street. She took off her shoes, rolled up her
pants, and went knock on the windows of the car. Pluck is what it
is called, I guess. He started his engine and pulled over to our
side of the street but could not get close enough to the curb. We
would have to wade in two-foot cow water to get to the car. But
there was a rickshaw sitting there and we hired the rickshaw for
five rupees to make a bridge to the car. Five of us scrambled
over the rickshaw and into the taxi.

Driving out of the city, the water was high enough to seep in
through the car door. But the semi-amphibious car made it through
and back to non-flooded land. Soon we were out of the standing
water and onto higher ground.

The manager at the hotel laughed at our story. Weather like this
is very unusual. It never rains in October. But there had been
no Monsoon this year. Very strange that it would rain just at the
wrong moment.

Disney would tell you that it is a small world and Varanasi and
New York are pretty much alike with the same kind of people and
the same culture. Don't believe it. I don't think that the Epcot
Center can match being in someplace real like Varanasi. That is
bad in some ways and good in others.

Postcript: At this point I can't even remember who was talking
about Disneyworld or at what dinner. This piece was actually
written for a Guest of Honor speech at Windycon. But when the
time came to give it everybody else was giving light, humorous
speeches. I didn't think the audience was ready to be dunked into
water with cow dung. And you really can't hear about a place like
Varanasi. You have to really be there. [-mrl]

I asked last issue why people refer to a certain person in the
Middle East is called Saddam rather than Hussein, if one name is
used. Several people wrote and pointed out there are other people
in the Middle East named Hussein and it might lead to confusion.
So sites like http://tinyurl.com/a7le can say "Saddam has
challenged Bush" rather than "Hussein has challenged Bush" to avoid
ambiguity with all the other Husseins involved in this conflict.
[Irony intentional.]

The most interesting response came from Joseph T Major who said:

"You ask "why do we call him Saddam"? Probably because Husayn is
his father's name. His full name is "Saddam Husayn al-Majid". He
could also be called, "Abu Uday" -- this being the Arab custom of
calling someone in effect "father of his oldest son", "Abu" being
"father" and Uday being the horrid monster whose palace was
decorated in Early Orgy."

Evelyn responded to this, "So that's what it means that the
Anthony Quinn character in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA was named "Auda abu
Tayi."

CAPSULE: Louis Sachar's story is extremely clever, but his
characters are just not really very engaging. Take away the
gimmicks and there is not much left here. An innocent boy is sent
to a correctional work camp where the order of the day every day
is dig holes in the desert. He wins the friendship and respect of
the other boys and then the story gets dissipated into strange
plot twists and weird connections. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1
(-4 to +4)

HOLES is one of those crazy, weird stories in which weird plot
details seem to keep coming in totally at random. By the halfway
point one is never sure where the film is going to be in another
two minutes. But by the end of the film it is clear that there
was method in all the madness and all the strange loose ends
weirdly get knitted up so that every part of the film fits into
every other part. That is a kind of clever scriptwriting that I
can admire. A script where all that can be happening in a good
story is really a thing of awe. But that sort of cleverness
should not be what the story is all about. There needs to be a
good story under it all. If the plot is only bland and then gets
pulled into a lot of loose ends, the cleverness of the weird
scripting can do no more for the film than good cinematography or
a good musical score can by themselves. HOLES is a story where if
you pull on only one little plot point, everything else in the
film seems tied into it. The only problem is that the basic work
camp tale is somewhat mediocre. The characters are not good and I
found I just could not really care what happens to them.

Louis Sachar wrote the film based on his own book written for
young adults. There are a lot of weird things going on. Shia
LaBeouf plays Stanley Yelnats IV, the son of a man trying to find
a way to deodorize sneakers. When he is convicted of a crime he
did not commit he is sentenced to eighteen months at Camp Green
Lake. In spite of the pleasant sounding name, Camp Green Lake is
a work camp where boys who have been in trouble with the law are
sent to work out their time digging holes in a dried-up lakebed
desert. The regimen is one hole five feet in diameter and five
feet deep each and every day for each and every boy. Three
scoundrels run the camp. There are two sadists: Mr. Sir played by
Jon Voight and Warden Walker played by Sigourney Weaver, and the
worthless counselor Mr. Pendanski played by the multi-faceted Tim
Blake Nelson. (Can you believe this actor is also an award-
winning country music singer and wrote, produced, and directed the
shattering concentration camp film THE GREY ZONE? When do you
find time to sleep, Mr. Nelson?)

The film returns ever again to tell the story of Stanley's family
from what looks like the hill country of Latvia, if there is such
a thing. There is a gypsy curse on the Yelnats family. It also
tells the story of a Wild West desperado named Kissin' Kate
Barlow. Do not worry, everything will make a sort of sense as
well as tie into everything else. There is also a plot about
racial intolerance. That too is part of the whole strange
enchilada.

HOLES has some impressive actors to bolster the story but is not
highly demanding of its major adult actors. Sigourney Weaver
plays her role as warden calm and cold and demanding. It is a
role she has played most of her career. She adds a little more
ruthlessness to her character, but it still is not greatly
innovative. Jon Voight's career shows a good deal more variety,
but here his character has a lot in common with the lowlife he
played in ANACONDA. The film also features such diverse actors as
Eartha Kitt, Henry Winkler, and Patricia Arquette. HOLES is
directed by Andrew Davis, who usually does action films for
adults, having directed UNDER SEIGE and THE FUGITIVE. It is odd
to see him direct a young adult film, but that is not the only odd
thing about this film by a long shot.

There is a lot in the film that is just a little off-kilter. Some
of it is good off-kilter and some is not. There may be too much
cleverness for the film's own good. I rate the film a 6 on the 0
to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. [-mrl]

Michael Chabon begins this anthology with an introduction in which
he says he wants to "revive the lost genres of short fiction," and
expresses a preference for "the Plotted Short Story." While this
sounds admirable, one gets the impression that he hasn't been
reading much outside precisely those literary magazines he is
criticizing for not carrying this sort of story. As James Hynes
in the "Washington Post" observed, "[I]t's not as though there's a
deficit of plot in print, either. Much more plot-driven popular
fiction is published and read every year than literary short
stories, which appear mostly in little magazines and are read
mainly by their authors' friends and family. The Magazine of
Fantasy & Science Fiction and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine are
still going strong, and fat anthologies of the best science
fiction, mystery and horror stories still appear every year."

(On the other hand, Mark Holcomb in the "Village Voice" said,
"Save for a few moldering back issues gathering dust in rural
barbershops or drawing preposterous bids on eBay, pulp- and
popular-fiction magazines went the way of Vitalis hair oil and
fake-turtleneck dickeys sometime in the 1970s. Out of step with
the times, these bastions of populist literature passed quietly
into publishing history." From this we can conclude, I think,
that Hynes has a far better grasp of a clue than Holcomb.)

Anyway, Chabon's support of the plot is admirable. Would that the
stories in this book lived up to it.

Oh, there are some stories that seem plot-centered, but many of
them appear to me to be more of what Chabon is protesting against.
They may be "genre" pieces, but they are as focused on psychology
and inner angst as on plot. And somehow, "thrilling" is not a
word I would apply to most of them.

Take for example the first story, "Tedford and the Magalodon" by
Jim Shepard. You would think that a story about a search for a
giant sea serpent would be thrilling, but it manages to be another
story about the protagonist's inner feelings rather than an
adventure.

"The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter" by Glen David
Gold, on the other hand does have mystery and plot, even if a lot
of the plot is related by one character to another. Heck, it
worked for Asimov in "Foundation".

And so it goes. As I said, at least half the stories seem no
different to me than the sort of "contemporary, quotidian,
plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story" Chabon decries. They
may be good (or in some cases not), but they hardly seem the sort
of thing one expects in a book of "thrilling tales."

The closest to classic science fiction of the "Twilight Zone"
variety is Nick Hornby's "Otherwise Pandemonium"--it even has the
"magical machine" that one found so often in the old pulps.
Another story with a strong plot is "The Case of the Nazi Canary"
by Michael Moorcock features "Sir Seaton Begg, Metatemporal
Detective," but there is no time travel or anything else like it.
It is, however, an alternate history murder mystery. Chris
Offut's "Chuck's Bucket" is a wonderfully convoluted alternate
worlds story which obviously derives from Alfred Bester's "The Men
Who Murdered Mohammed", but takes its premise down a different
path--or strand of spaghetti. (One feels obliged to note that
Bester lived--and died--before the recent rise of the fatwa.)

Michael Chabon's own story is also an alternate history in which
the British still rule North America in 1876. However, because it
is presented as the first chapter of a serialized novel, and the
rest isn't there (is it possible Chabon will actually finish it?),
it is ultimately disappointing.

Carol Emshwiller's "The General" seems as though it could be
science fiction--or it could be straightforward adventure fiction.
And Rick Moody has a science fiction story even before he starts
fooling with levels of reality in "The Albertine Notes", which is
the longest story in the book and the most crafted, although the
style was not to my taste.

Since Chabon was not assembling a strictly science fiction
anthology, or even a science fiction, fantasy, and horror
anthology, there are some stories of other genres--mystery,
adventure, and so on. "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened
Thereafter" (mentioned above) is more along the lines of those
stories of animal tamers, and "The General" (ditto) is close to a
straight war story. "The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers" by
Aimee Bender is a straight mystery story highly reminiscent of
John Collier. Elmore Leonard's "How Carlos Webster Changed His
Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman" is a flat-out
Western.

Ultimately, one has to ask two questions: whether Chabon delivers
on his promise of "thrilling stories," and whether the anthology
is good. The answer to the first is probably "no", but the answer
to the second I would say is "yes".

(It is inevitable that I would compare this in my mind to
CONJUNCTIONS 39: THE NEW FABULISTS. In both cases, the intent
seems to be to bring genre writing to the mainstream audience. In
the case of CONJUNCTIONS, it is supposedly fantasy stories in
particular; in the case of MCSWEENEY'S it is broader. But in both
cases, even though the results are good, the contents do not
deliver what the title implies. Then again, how often do volumes
titled "The Year's Best ..." really contain the best stories,
particularly when there are four different ones, each with
different stories?) [-ecl]

I started my Hugo nominee reading with David Brin's KILN PEOPLE.
(*) Now, a few months ago, I reviewed Frances Sherwood's THE
BOOK OF SPLENDOR, featuring the Golem of Prague. And that it in
turn was very similar to Lisa Goldstein's THE ALCHEMIST'S DOOR
(which I had read a couple of weeks previously). And I added that
apparently when it's time to golem, we golem. Well, evidently
Brin had also decided it was time to golem. His premise is that
in the future, people will be able to transfer their
minds/personalities/souls (take your pick) into clay copies of
themselves. These clay creatures do have the power of speech, but
are called "golems" (as well as "dittos"). They also last only a
day. There is a murder mystery involving the head of Universal
Kilns. Their logo is a "U" and a "K", each in its own circle.
Cute, right? But wait, there's more. The head of UK is Yosil
Maharal, and other characters are named James Gadarene and Aeneas
Kaolin. (There are competing golem producers named Tetragram
Limited and Fabrique Chelm as well.) All this is very
distracting, particularly when it turns out that Yosil Maharal
chose that name for its connections, but (apparently) Kaolin and
Gadarene did not.

The main character is a detective, who uses this new technology to
create copies of himself that can go off and work for/as him,
returning to "inload" their memories of the day into him before
collapsing into a lifeless heap of clay. There would seem to be
all sorts of philosophical questions that these copies might
ask--let's start with, "Why should I go off and investigate this crime
instead of sitting in the sun all day?" (This is especially true
for those copies created which end up with no chance of inloading
their memories.) But instead we get four points-of-view
investigating a murder mystery, and the points-of-view are the
detectives and three copies of the detective. It's different, but
I found it ultimately too confusing, and also eventually
boring--somewhere about three-quarters of the way through the book, I
didn't care what the big secret was, or who committed which crime,
or how to manipulate the "Standing Wave" that was apparently one's
consciousness. There seemed to be some good ideas here, but they
were ignored or downplayed to make room for the mystery and the
whole multiple point-of-view technique.

So I have to say that while Brin raises some interesting
questions, he doesn't deal with them well enough to suit my
tastes.

(*) Well, actually I had already read THE SCAR by China Mieville.
Or rather, I had started it, but gave up partway through because
it was not my cup of tea. And I had read Kim Stanley Robinson's
THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT, which I did enjoy and think
worthwhile. It is an alternate history, though frankly, its
virtues are not that of alternate history per se. [-ecl]

I'm gradually working my way through Mark Twain's writings. It
was easy enough to get and read all his novels, and some of his
non-fiction (though perhaps JOAN OF ARC straddles the two), but a
lot of his shorter pieces are more difficult to find. Yes, there
are volumes titled "The Complete Essays" and "The Complete Short
Stories", but those titles are not accurate. So I6m gradually
picking up the Harper and Brothers edition of "The Complete Mark
Twain"--volumes such as "Europe and Elsewhere", "In Defense of
Harriet Shelley", "Mark Twain's Notebook", "Mark Twain's
Speeches", "Sketches Old and New", and "What Is Man?" The title
piece of the latter is a long Socratic dialogue dealing with the
mind-body problem--not the sort of thing one would expect to find
Twain writing about. And the end-piece is another long work, this
one an essay, "Is Shakespeare Dead?", explaining that Francis
Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays, or at least that Shakespeare
didn't. Also included are essays on history, travel, English, and
the death of his daughter Jean. All in all, it's a very varied
collection, well worth reading. (I'm sure the pieces are
available on-line, since Twain is well past copyright, even with
the massive extensions Congress keeps voting.)

Everyone knows that Nevil Shute wrote ON THE BEACH, and a lot of
people know he wrote A TOWN LIKE ALICE, but not many people are
familiar with his "Vinland the Good". This is written as a
screenplay, though it was never made into a movie (nor do I think
that Shute necessarily expected it to be). It starts in the
then-present, with a demobbed soldier returning to his British public
school to teach United States history, but most of it is about how
the Norse discovered America. What is most interesting is that
Shute seems to emphasize the parallel origins of these first
American "settlers" and the early Australian settlers. That is,
the first few scenes set in the past are of Eric the Red picking
fights and becoming outlawed, first from Norway to North Iceland,
then from North Iceland to South Iceland, and then finally from
South Iceland to Greenland. It's true that Eric got to transport
himself and his family rather than being transported, and also
that he tries to provide some defense for what he did (though
rather unconvincingly), but the outlaw origins are there
nonetheless.

John Steinbeck's AMERICA AND THE AMERICANS is quite readable, if a
bit dated. It does not cover the Norse explorations, but instead
looks at the current (as of 1966) state of affairs, including only
as much history as is necessary. And Steinbeck's political
positions are made clear throughout. Consider his description of
moving the Indians from land that white settlers wanted to
undesirable land: "This process took an unconscionably long and
bloody time, and mistakes were made, such as the prime one of
moving the Cherokee tribes from the Appalachian Mountains to the
West and settling them on unpromising-looking Oklahoma. When oil
was discovered there, the mistake was apparent; but for some of
the Indians it was too late--they kept the oil." One can't help
but feel that his writing may have been influenced by Mark Twain.

And on a more technical note, Amir D. Aczel's THE MYSTERY OF THE
ALEPH tries to tie together infinity, transfinite numbers, and the
Kabbalah. He is only moderately successful, even if there were
serious religious concerns with the whole notion of infinity. But
his description of the lives of the various mathematicians who
worked on this question is less dry than usual, and you get to
find out who didn't get along with whom, and yet another
explanation of why there is no Nobel Prize in mathematics.
(Actually, he presents two possible explanations.) And in
addition, Aczel talks about Georg Cantor's mental aberrations,
including that he would leave his work on transfinite numbers for
long periods of time in order to try to convince people that
Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. Synchronicity! [-ecl]